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NASAThe Rare Venus Transit (6/9/2008)

NASA joined the world June 8, 2004, in viewing a rare celestial event, one not seen by any person now alive. The "Venus transit" -- the apparent crossing of our planetary neighbor in front of the sun -- was captured from the unique perspective of NASA's sun-observing TRACE spacecraft. The top image shows Venus on the eastern limb of the sun. The faint ring around the planet comes from the scattering of its atmosphere, which allows some sunlight to show around the edge of the otherwise dark planetary disk. The faint glow on the disk is an effect of the TRACE telescope. The bottom left image is in the ultraviolet, and the bottom right image is in the extreme ultraviolet. The last "Venus transit" occurred more than a century ago, in 1882, and was used to compute the distance between Earth and the sun. Scientists with NASA's Kepler mission hope to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars by searching for transits similar to this one. If people missed the June 8, 2004, Venus transit, they will have another chance in 2012 on June 6. After that, there will not be another Venus transit until Dec. 11, 2117. Image credit: NASA/LMSAL > View QuickTime movies in ultraviolet: 4.2 Mb | 1.4 Mb


This item is part of the collection: NASA Images

Feed_id: /1/rss_feeds/NASA_Solarsystem_Eclipse_Image_Gallery/nasa_solarsystem_eclipse_image_gallery:eclipseimg_080530_goes10/125264_ImageGalleryXML_Feed.rss
Mediatype: image
Creator: NASA
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/eclipse/EclipseImg_080609_Venus.html
Date: 6/9/2008
Year: 2008
Rights: Public Domain
What: Sun
What: TRACE
What: Venus
What: Earth
Identifier: 242339main_venustransit_HI_full
Addeddate: 2009-08-20 00:11:48
Publicdate: 2009-08-20 00:19:49
Keywords: The Rare Venus Transit; What -- Sun; What -- TRACE; What -- Venus; What -- Earth

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